Fidelity March

What with the snow day and the cancellation of rehearsal last week, we are still in the dark about what pieces we'll need to have ready for DYFA and the spring concert.  This works out well for me, because I can fit in a post about this march, one of my favourites of the pieces we're playing this semester.

Old Mapleton Circus Band, by Beige Alert, from Flickr

Mr. McIlwain has told us that this piece has a circus feel.  Composer Karl L. King was working as a circus musician in 1912, when he wrote this march, as his page on Wikipedia tells us.  King is most famous for composing the march Barnum & Bailey's Favorite (here's a link to a frighteningly fast version) and he spent some time as bandmaster of the Barnum & Bailey Circus band.  He was a prolific composer, and one of the first to write specifically for school bands.

This arrangement of Fidelity, by Andrew Glover, is new (2011). There are no performances available yet on YouTube, except for this one created for the publisher by professional musicians.

 
Email readers, please click through to the blog, or click on this link to the video.

When I hear this piece, I imagine a sunny afternoon and a band playing in a town square during a municipal gathering, such as a ribbon-cutting or an apple-pie-eating contest. The mood is festive.  Meanwhile, the sneaky guys from Sneak Attack! are tiptoeing around town, up to some sort of mischief involving the creation of street art or the placing of smart cars in public fountains.  And the band plays on...

Rehearsal notes from April 17

photo by Harald Groven, from Flickr

Here are links to pdf's of the permission forms given out this week.  Please return these forms by May 1.

DYFA permission form

West Side Story permission form

On Tuesday, May 15, we will have a final meet-up for the year, from 7-8pm 3:15-4:15.  Here, we will return and sort our music, talk about plans for next year, and eat food, glorious food.

YouTube gets personal

What is the sound of 185 musicians playing together?

These are the four mass band pieces, some of the titles are mixed up.  Email readers, please click through to the blog to see the videos.

Pirates of the Caribbean (Soundtrack Highlights)

Is there such a thing as total originality?  Or is every creation built on the work of others?  The movie  Pirates of the Caribbean seems to owe a great debt of inspiration to the work of others.  It is also an example of the collaborative nature of pop culture product.  This is certainly true of the creation of the soundtrack.

Our copy of the piece credits the composition to Klaus Badelt.  But composition of the soundtrack appears to have been a hasty collaborative effort among Badelt, his employer Hans Zimmer, and several other colleagues, according to Wikipedia, with much of the credit for the main themes claimed later by Zimmer.  One critic suggested that the soundtrack's themes were recycled from earlier Zimmer projects, and bemoaned the departure from traditional pirate movie music of the swashbuckling variety.

Despite its cloudy origins, medleys of the soundtrack appear to be very popular for bands and symphonies.  The version we're playing this year is arranged by Ted Ricketts, who for 24 years was Music Director and Producer at Walt Disney World, and has composed or arranged over 80 pieces for music publisher Hal Leonard.

Here are a couple of performances of the Rickett's arrangement.  This one is by a middle school band.



This version is by high school band from Osaka, Japan (I think they have a gong - check me on this).

Practice These

Here's the list from this week's rehearsal, with links to blog posts that offer audio/video:

Fidelity
Creed
Redlands March
Music from Wicked
Danza del Fuego
Tales of Sea and Sail
Toy Story
Sneak Attack
Pirates of the Caribbean

Image by mag3737, from Flickr

Youth Concert Info Nuggets

 

• Thursday, April 5, 7:00pm call time
• Meet in the music room
• White shirt, black pants, shoes and socks

If you were at the mass band practice last week, or you've been part of this concert before, you'll know that it is somewhat of an overwhelming experience to play together with so many other musicians.  Even finding a seat and a stand in that large group is a challenge, let alone hearing what's going on and adapting to different conductors.  When we're in an overwhelming situation, we focus on our own survival first, and think about the big picture later.

Here's a bit of context to help with that bigger picture.  The Community Band (here's their website) is made up of adults and youth from the Dufferin area.  The band provides a forum for adults to pursue the concert band experience.  Many communities have bands such as this; consider seeking one out (or starting one!) after you finish high school.

A major goal of our local Community Band is to "to provide adult mentorship for our youth in their study of music", per their website.  This is done both by including younger players in the Band, and by arranging an annual concert with elementary and high school bands.  Although there is no admission fee for the concert on Thursday, voluntary donations will be matched by the Community Band (up to $500), and will go to support music programs at the participating elementary schools.  And the experience of the rehearsal and concert also supplies opportunities for individual mentoring.

OK, what does this mean for us?  First things first:  make sure you are as comfortable as you can, with a chair and a stand for yourself or to share.  Make sure you can see the conductor, and they can see you.  The usual stuff, magnified in significance by the size of the mass band.

I took a little survey last Tuesday of the students sitting near me at rehearsal, asking them for advice on how to survive the strangeness of the mass band experience.  Here are some of their suggestions:

• the audience doesn't know the piece by heart, so they won't know if you make a mistake
• if you do make one, stop if you have to, don't panic and come back in when you can
• if you get lost, listen to what the more experienced players are doing
• don't worry if you have to drop out for a moment

Now that you have a bigger picture of the Youth Concert and some advice on surviving and thriving there, I have one final suggestion, which is that you embrace this concert as a singular event.  There won't be too many times in your life when you get to play in such a large group.  And singular events create opportunities.  

If I were to draw a Venn diagram of the Youth Concert, it would be a bunch of little circles representing the various individual bands, all surrounded by a larger circle representing concert band musicians in the Dufferin area.  Kind of a boring visual, and possibly an illegal use of a Venn diagram, but you get the picture:  we all have concert band musicianship in common.  So, if you sit down next to a stranger, reach out across that commonality, and strike up a conversation. Could be the start of making beautiful music together.